Ben Cort photographs a North Plains headdress from 1880-1920, one of 2,500 objects in the Portland Art Museum's Native American collection. Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian

Everyone "digitizes" these days. Fans snap photos at Bruce Springsteen concerts. Parents take a zillion photos of their kids. Owners capture their cats in cute hats.

Museums are no different.

The Portland Art Museum has begun a large-scale project to document its artwork with high-resolution digital photographs. Documenting its collection with photographs is nothing new. The museum has boxes of black-and-white negatives, slides and transparencies going back decades. What's new is putting digital photos online for everyone to see, from fourth-graders to Korean scholars. With a couple of clicks, an entire collection -- Northwest art or Native American art, for example -- can be available, instead of a fraction of it because of limited gallery space. Only 5 percent of the museum's 43,000 objects are ever on view.

But photos are only the beginning. Curators will also provide links to the wide world of online information. Visit the museum in person and you might read a few brief lines on the wall next to, say, a Samurai warrior's suit of armor, listing its age, material, something about armor and perhaps the donor's name. But online, viewers can delve into details about the artist, related artists, their styles, materials used, perhaps X-rays of the object, plus history, warfare, culture, science, fashion -- the list is limitless.

"Digitizing breathes life into an object for our audiences," says Donald Urquhart, who oversees the project as director of collections management.

Benefits to the museum are numerous, he says. Digital photographs let curators examine objects without the wear and tear of handling them. Look, but don't touch. Digital records document the condition of objects, a point of reference for decades to come. Curators at other museums can also view the Portland Art Museum's collections, spreading the word of who owns what.

Speaking of other museums, Portland is not alone. The Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and many others continue to digitize their collections.

Two photographers started in March of this year and work 24 to 30 hours a week in a basement room of the museum. On a recent morning, a Native American headdress from 1880-1920 sits on a table beneath two powerful strobe lights. Photographer Ben Cort focuses his digital single lens reflex camera on the feathers, glass beads and cotton fabric from 10 feet away. With a click of the shutter, the strobes flash and five seconds later, the image pops up on a computer behind him.

Cort checks the screen for lighting and exposure, then zeros in on the intricate beadwork. He typically takes eight to 10 shots of an object.

Using a fixed camera above a smaller table, a second photographer, Malina Graves, shoots prints and flat objects, controlling the focus, exposure and shutter from the laptop, not the camera itself. A third location, a flat wall, allows them to photograph larger objects such as paintings.

Photographing 40 works of art is considered a good day, but it depends on the object. A suit of samurai armor took an entire day because of multiple pieces, but photographers can capture and edit 100 Japanese prints in an afternoon. So far, the Portland Art Museum has photographed 99 percent of its galleries currently on view.

"We focused on the art in our galleries because it's the best known and most visited," Urquhart says. "Every fourth-grade classroom in the state is invited to study and visit those exceptional collections. We want to enhance that experience and make it virtually available to every student everywhere."

Next up are the Native American collection (6,000 objects) and Northwest art (2,500 objects). The idea is to focus on collections that distinguish the museum because it can't afford to photograph every item it owns. Curators are working to flesh out online images with expanded notes and stories, Urquhart says.

But photographs are no substitute for visiting the museum, he says.

"Digital images don't capture the subtle movements of a Calder mobile as you pass beneath it, or the monumental scale of Lichtenstein's 'Brushstrokes' as it greets you at our doorstep. Every work in our collection is better seen, or heard, or felt in person."